This is a very poor PSA. The director made some bad decisions and wasted a lot of money.
To give you guys a peek behind the hood, after you develop a PSA the challenge is to get airtime. Most broadcast and cable stations donate a few slots to PSAs as tax write-offs, and some are mandated to reserve X-amount of minutes per day for PSAs. Socialism at its worst, eh?
So you check with a station and find out that a few people got in line with their PSAs before you. Getting yours aired requires the services of a specialist. There are 5 or 6 guys in the country making a living at this. They seem to be retired TV execs with a lot of juice, and they know who to call, who to pitch your PSA to for a buy in. "Hey Jimbo, I got this really cute PSA for breast cancer awareness, these are nice folks, you wanna give them a slot?" etc.
You gotta pay that guy around $100-$125K. Otherwise, your PSA might run on the local news channel at 3 am Sunday if you're lucky. Once.
Given these kinds of odds, you shouldn't make a PSA such that people are scratching their heads wondering *** they are watching. The message should be clear and razor-sharp. No ambiguity at whatsoever. This PSA is a total fail because it tries too hard and overthinks its own premise. All the statistics it shows have no context.
How I would fix it: The images are striking and do have a bit of impact. Take one of them, maybe just the first mom shooting, and keep that. Have a narrator open on a black screen with white words, "Your child has been abducted. What do you do?" Cut to shot of mom with gun. Cut back to screen, "You don't need guns, you need Amber Alert Network." Cut to images showing how Amber Alert works and how you would use it.
Broadcast TV is bigtime and you don't want to mess around with art pieces. Somebody's ego got in the way of this one.
To give you guys a peek behind the hood, after you develop a PSA the challenge is to get airtime. Most broadcast and cable stations donate a few slots to PSAs as tax write-offs, and some are mandated to reserve X-amount of minutes per day for PSAs. Socialism at its worst, eh?
So you check with a station and find out that a few people got in line with their PSAs before you. Getting yours aired requires the services of a specialist. There are 5 or 6 guys in the country making a living at this. They seem to be retired TV execs with a lot of juice, and they know who to call, who to pitch your PSA to for a buy in. "Hey Jimbo, I got this really cute PSA for breast cancer awareness, these are nice folks, you wanna give them a slot?" etc.
You gotta pay that guy around $100-$125K. Otherwise, your PSA might run on the local news channel at 3 am Sunday if you're lucky. Once.
Given these kinds of odds, you shouldn't make a PSA such that people are scratching their heads wondering *** they are watching. The message should be clear and razor-sharp. No ambiguity at whatsoever. This PSA is a total fail because it tries too hard and overthinks its own premise. All the statistics it shows have no context.
How I would fix it: The images are striking and do have a bit of impact. Take one of them, maybe just the first mom shooting, and keep that. Have a narrator open on a black screen with white words, "Your child has been abducted. What do you do?" Cut to shot of mom with gun. Cut back to screen, "You don't need guns, you need Amber Alert Network." Cut to images showing how Amber Alert works and how you would use it.
Broadcast TV is bigtime and you don't want to mess around with art pieces. Somebody's ego got in the way of this one.